I too have been through 22 months of court in a challenging Family Law case. My ex husband applied for contact then changed this to permanent custody of our child even though he remained absent for virtually all her life. My child was 9 years old at the time her dad reappeared and she was made to go through emotional trauma of not knowing where she will be living.

Her dad was on state benefits, has a list of child protection & Family protection orders from his previous partner who had his son. My ex even has injured this son.

Very early on in the court case, he stood up in court and wanted all the financial benefits such as child maintenance from me and told the Judge so and I quote “she (meaning me) has a good job”. The Judge told him that no Judge would remove a child from the only parent she has ever known.
So his legal team launched a campaign making every single allegation against me to prove that I was an unfit mother. I had to prove that I was innocent.

Our child, however had a solicitor, a social worker & a child psychologist to help her through this traumatic process. She saw her dad a matter of 4 times under supervision and on the 5th time unsupervised he threatened her, he told her he would hurt me if she didn’t do as she was told as well as say to her he was going to take her away from me. My child told her social worker & solicitor what he was saying to her, this was brought up in court and my child totally refused to have any contact with him whatsoever. The Judge complied with her wishes and granted me her mom permanent residence & custody.

Because of this court case I am severely in debt, I could not get any legal aid whatsoever., ther was no access to justice for me plus the Judge presiding over the finding of fact hearing totally ignored my written evidence supporting what I was saying. He believed my ex husband and witnesses, three of his witnesses never showed up in court at all.

However, my ex got all the financial assistance he wanted and still refused to pay any child maintenace to our child. He never had beforehand, he now has disappeared again like he did many years ago and has breached the court order dated 3rd December 2008. As for me, I’m still picking up the pieces and after exhausting all ways to get some money back from these proceedings, I am now going to take my case to the European Courts of Human Rights.

This boggles my mind. Totally!